December 16, 2005

BY DOUG ELFMAN TELEVISION CRITIC

Chicagoan Rebecca Jarvis got stabbed in the back and lost the possibility of working for Donald Trump on Thursday night.

After losing the finale of "The Apprentice," Trump turned to the winner, Randal Pinkett, and asked if he should hire the woman he considered an excellent potential employee.

Randal said no; "The Apprentice" is in the singular form, not the plural, he basically said.

Trump said he may have hired her if Randal had stood up for her. But no dice.

Randal's job will be to help with the building of new Trump towers in Randal's native New Jersey.

The two finalists faced Trump's showdown live on stage on NBC at Lincoln Square. Rebecca -- a 23-year-old University of Chicago economics and pre-law graduate, and a journalist for Crain's Chicago Business -- was largely hurt in her bid to become Trump's apprentice because she failed to raise money at a charity fund-raiser she was tasked with running.

That was because she adhered to charity sponsor Yahoo's request not to hit up VIPs for cash for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric Aids Foundation.

Trump throws Jarvis a curve

Randal, 34, raised $11,000 for his own event, even though his softball fund-raiser got rained out. His potential knock was that he lacked a Plan B if the softball game got washed out by rain. It did.

But he moved it indoors at the last second and made a success of it.

Rebecca faced another obstacle. Trump messed up her event's schedule by showing up and herding VIPs away from a martini party to a comedy show, 30 minutes earlier than she had planned. Then, he complained about the resulting cluster.

"It might be a little bit disorganized," Trump said of the disorganization he caused.

Randal had also faced a request from the sponsor of his event, Outback Steakhouse, not to raise funds at his fund-raiser for Autism Speaks, but he eschewed Outback and raised money, anyway.

'Stuck with two stars'

Randal -- a 34-year-old Rhodes Scholar who founded his own tech and consulting firm -- was a probable front-runner going into the finals. He had won three business tasks during the earlier season. Rebecca had lost two of three tasks she fronted before the finals.

Even so, Trump claimed at the beginning of Thursday's show that he was still undecided on who he'd hire.

"Basically, I'm stuck with two stars," he said later, during a prerecorded boardroom meeting.

The finale ended with an entertaining second half, with Trump questioning people who worked with Rebecca and Randal in his boardroom, and with Trump dealing with the two finalists live on TV.

But the first hour was a little on the slow side, mostly because the show focused on the sausage-grinding jargon of business details, like when Autism Speaks vice president Alison Singer laid out this bottom line to Randal: "When we were talking about doing the softball game, I feel there was very good integration of the autism epidemic messaging into the program."

The fifth season of the show is reportedly going to move from New York to California, and won't be shown until after NBC airs the Winter Olympics.